Thank you for your time at Cougar Mountain Institute!

"Tobias; Thank you so very much for your and Joy's time spent with us,... Many of our regular attendees were remarkably touched by the content and presentation of your Awakening Series. We would very much wish for you to return sometime again soon and continue the teachings and suggestive living principles for us.

We can attest to your dynamic selfless 'offering' of yourself and the teachings of all the spiritual Masters you've come in contact with thru all your lives and experiences." In Service,-Michael Medved,Founder Cougar Mountain Institute of Esoteric Studies Bellevue,Washington USA

Thank YOU to Monica who was the sparkplugbehind the whole thing & Micheal & Carolinefor the lovely space for the retreat.

Evening Program: Course of Awakening is also presented as an Evening Program of Spiritual Healing, Satsang, Divine Discourse & practical healing methods to take home. Contact for more details or to schedule a healing evening for your groupinfo@SoulCounseling.com

We will be using some of the following easy, enjoyable, simple, proven and true exercises used by Masters and Teachers over the centuries--

These are enjoyable, simple to learn ways of allowing in abundance, pleasure, enjoyment that you will be able to easily incorporate into your life after the retreat. You will come away from the course with a seed that can grow into a permanent shift-awakening for you.

Simple Connected Breathing- 'The Breath of Life' has been called Prana by the Hindus, ki by the Japanese, Chi by the Chinese, Ruahk by the Greeks. This is the Living Soul Breath Word of God. With this method we connect with and allow the Life Force to re-fill us, re-set our etheric, mental, emotional and physical bodies. Amazing clearings, awakenings, rejuvenations have occurred for participants during this simple exercise.

Calming the Mind– In this exercise which usually turns into fun and laughter, we will be letting our thoughts and our mindtalk free so that they can be released. It’s like we are taking the lid off a pressure cooker and allowing it to relax and find it’s own level. After a while of using this method we find our thoughts and minds coming to rest in a peaceful, balanced, harmonious place. Many people find that with just this one exercise they have a major shift in feeling more peaceful, joyful and powerfully centered.

Inner Body Awakening – An enjoyable, easy and comforting method for becoming more aware of our Inner Body. The Inner Body also known as the Etheric Body is an exact duplicate of our ideal physical body. This Etheric Body is what leaves our physical bodies when we have an out of body experience or pass on to our next existance. The Inner Body is what creates, feeds, and heals our physical bodies. Contacting and truly feeling and inhabiting this Inner Body assists in us being comfortable in and being able to relax & enjoy our bodies. People have reported whole new relationships and healings with their bodies by doing just this simple method.

Physical Energy Awakening – As most of us know nowadays, our bodies end up carrying most of our stress and there is gathering evidence that almost all of our dis-eases are rooted in stressing our bodies. The body knows innately how to release these stuck, held back, pent up energies. Animals do this freely, easily and automatically. Watch how dogs will shake their heads and bodies to feel better and more aligned. See how the ducks flap their wings to release pent up energy and then settle down, see how cats stretch and ‘vibrate’ their bodies filling themselves with energy, see how birds ‘puff’ their feathers out and re-energize themselves etc.

This exercise is designed to let our bodies naturally and easily realign themselves, and free themselves of any unwanted, stuck or uncomfortable energies they’ve been carrying. This is where we help the Inner Body-Etheric Body to re-integrate and connect with our physical bodies.

Laughter Yoga -Pure Laughter & Merriment – We have all heard it said that-- “Laughter is the best medicine.”Dr. Bernie Siegel cured his cancer using only laughter by watching funny movies.There are hundreds of cases of laughter healing supposedly terminally ill patients.

With this enjoyable technique we let laughter wash over and through us…usually there are a few people who have truly tearspilling, gut busting healing laughter occur during this playful exercise.

Love – The “My Cup Runneth Over” Exercise- God is Love, The Power of Love is the strongest power in the Universe, though often in the current model of civilization on Earth we have come to believe that Mind and thinking are more powerful.

In this exercise we will activate the Energy of Love into our hearts, minds and bodies in a strong physical way. Besides being one of the most enjoyable feelings and energy, Love also heals us on every level.

And The Best for Last!

We will be learning one of the simplest methods on the planet, a method incorporating Jesus's forgiveness, the empty mind techniques of the Buddha & Zen masters and the Bhakta heart devotion of ancient India...all in one simple technique the ancient Hawaiians discovered...called:

Ho`oponopono

This is an ancient Hawaiian technique that we will be learning and using to heal our selves, those around us, and our civilization during our retreat. Simple, easy, incredibly effective and powerful. Please read how one doctor healed patients at a psychiatric institution by using this ancient Hawaiian method by following the link below.

"I" am the incoming and outgoing of breath,Owau no ka "Ho", a me ka "Ha"

The invisible, untouchable breeze,He huna ka makani nahenahe,

The undefinable atom of creation.Ka "Hua" huna o Kumulipo.

"I" am the "I".Owau no ka "I".

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Course of Awakening

We will be using some of the following easy, enjoyable, simple, proven and true exercises used by Masters and Teachers over the centuries--

These simple, natural and enjoyable ways of allowing in abundance, relaxation, pleasure, enjoyment will be able to be easily incorporated into your life after the course. This can be an ‘Awakening Retreat’ and you can come away from the course with a seed that will grow into a permanent shift-awakening for you.

Simple Connected Breathing—'The Breath of Life'

'The Breath of Life' has been called Prana by the Hindus, ki by the Japanese, Chi by the Chinese, Ruahk by the Greeks. This is the Living Soul Breath Word of God. With this method we connect with and allow the Life Force to re-fill us, re-set our etheric, mental, emotional and physical bodies. Amazing clearings, awakenings, rejuvenations occur during this simple exercise.

WATCHING THE BREATH

Simple connected breathing is one of the simplest ways of development of Meditative Awareness. In the Buddhist tradition, it is called Vipissana or Insight Meditation.

It is said that Siddhartha (who became The Buddha) was a very wealthy prince, who gave up all worldly possessions, left his family, and became a wandering monk in search of truth, and enlightenment. After many years of experiment and practice, after countless teachers, and endless prayer, he came to understand that he had done all that was humanly possible in his search for freedom and the cause of suffering. At that moment, he decided to sit under a bhodi tree, to simply sit, to do nothing except be aware of each breath, moment to moment. And while in this state, while immersed in this practice, Enlightenment descended on him. Freedom came. And the Buddha awakened and was born.

This simple practice of awareness, of watching the flow of breath, of noticing the movement and sensations associated with the act of breathing, became a fundamental aspect of Buddhism, and it forms the essence of countless types of meditation taught today and throughout history. This ability to simply observe life, moment to moment, without judging, resisting, or reacting, then becomes a direct route to higher consciousness and spiritual awakening.

This Conscious Awareness, the ability to simply observe yourself, is a very powerful and simple method to become aware of “the Presence of God”. Power, healing, and transformation are dependent on how relaxed and centered and how open yet focused one's mind becomes. And the benefits of this simple breathing exercise touches our spiritual, mental and physical well being in all areas of our life.

It makes sense that one of the most basic simple things – simple connected breathing—would also be one of the most powerful.

Breathing, walking, and feeling will give you all you need.

METHOD:

Sit comfortably in a chair or on the floor or in a beautiful palm grove! (or under a Bhodi tree)

Close your eyes and focus on the breath.

Notice the sensations at the tip of your nose if you’re breathing through your nose, or over the lips as the breath passes in and out if you are breathing through your mouth. Either way is ok.

Or pay close attention to the rising and falling of the chest. Or observe the movement of the belly as the breath comes and goes,

Tune into the subtle details of each breath.

Don't control the breath. Don't breathe in any certain way. Don't "do" anything with the breath. Just be an observer. Let it ‘do itself’.

Your mind may wander. Notice the mental chatter, the internal self-talk, the judging, comparing, associating, remembering, projecting, fantasizing, etc. Notice how busy the mind is, replaying the past, imagining the future. Wondering if it’s working, am I doing it right etc. This is the nature of the mind. Don't fight with it. You may find yourself off in a daydream on a whole journey. Don’t worry, no need to judge yourself as ‘not knowing how to do this.’ Or whatever else the mind may try to tell you. Simply notice it and keep returning your attention to the breath.

Stay in the present moment, simply looking, listening, and feeling inwardly. Put all of your attention on this breath... and this one... and this one.

Nothing else to do. Just experience each in-breath and each out-breath fully, directly, completely, moment to moment.

Each time you notice that you are thinking or talking to yourself, that your mind has wandered, or that you have "spaced out," simply return your awareness to the next inhale... the next exhale.

Practice this for 10 to 15 minutes, once or twice each day. Be patient. Don't underestimate the power of this technique. The results are subtle and cumulative, yet profound, and tremendously rewarding!

(picture of energy body of hand w/ Kirlian Photography)

Inner Body Awakening –

This is an enjoyable, easy and comforting method for becoming more aware of our Inner Body. The Inner Body also known as the Etheric Body is an exact duplicate of our ideal physical body. This Etheric Body is what leaves our physical bodies when we have an out of body experience or pass on to our next existance. The Inner Body is what creates, feeds, and heals our physical bodies. Contacting and truly feeling and inhabiting this Inner Body assists in us being comfortable in and being able to relax & enjoy our bodies. People have reported whole new relationships and healings with their bodies by doing just this simple method.

Our bodies are miracle healing machines. How do the cells know where to stop growing when healing a wound or a cut? How can our bodies so perfectly rebuild themselves?

There is an ‘Inner Body’ an energy etheric blueprint that the physical cells are being directed by when healing or replacing cells. Cancer is an obvious time when the ‘blueprint’ is no longer instructing the cells when to stop growing and they are replicating out of order.

This ‘Etheric Body’ is the body we astral travel in when we have ‘out of body experiences’. It is also the ‘perfected body’ that leaves us at death. It’s the ageless beautiful ideal body that we have in ‘heaven’. Wow, sounds good doesn’t it? Why can’t we have this body here and now?

We can…if we actively connect and contact our Inner body we can assist and co-operate with our bodies at a much higher level. Most of us today simply allow the body to do what it does unconsciously, outside of our awareness. The body performs – digestion, cell repair, healing, cleaning, lymphatic system circulation, heart beat, etc. without us being consciously aware of it. But there are Yogi’s that can stop their hearts, cease their breathing, do ‘miraculous’ healings and they are in conscious awareness of their bodies’ inner functions. The Inner Body exercise helps us to become more in touch with our inner bodies. It will keep us healthier, looking and feeling younger, and it feels really good. But keep it on the 'down low' because if this gets around we’ll start putting the cosmetics companies out of business!

METHOD:

- Feel your hands, feel each finger, each finger tip, the palm, the top, every detail, feel the energy of your hands. Feel the Inner body blueprint start to energize, tingle, vibrate in your hands. Feel your ‘inner hands’. Now do the same with your feet. Feel the Energy Body of your feet. In reflexology we have pressure points in our hands and feet that connect with all the rest of our bodies, including our internal organs. This is why we start with our hands and feet when connecting to our Inner Energy Etheric Body.

-When you have connected with your inner hands and feet slowly let this awareness of your Inner Body spread to the rest of your body. Just let it come, let it happen. Don’t push it. Just ‘notice’, just ‘sense’ your inner body. Keep allowing this.

-Image-in (imagine) the body you would love, that would feel good to you. Let it form in your imagination.

- now feel as if this perfect-comfortable-enjoyable body is inside you, just under the surface of your physical body. Feel it as a ‘perfect blueprint’ of your body.

-Let yourself ‘bathe’ in this Inner Body energy for as long as you feel comfortable.

Suggestion: after you have the energy moving and are feeling your Inner Body, you can place your attention on particular spots in your body that you would like to ‘heal’, energize, assist in coming back into full cooperation and functioning with the rest of your body. This is a very powerful way to assist the natural healing power of the body. As we are learning, good doctors don’t ‘heal’ us, but simply assist the body to heal itself.

Calming the Mind - Emptying the Mind

In this exercise which usually turns into fun and laughter, we will be letting our thoughts and our mindtalk free so that they can be released. It’s like we are taking the lid off a pressure cooker and allowing it to relax and find it’s own level. After a while of using this method we find our thoughts and minds coming to rest in a peaceful, balanced, harmonious place. Many people find that with this exercise they have a major shift in feeling more peaceful, joyful and powerfully centered.

Our minds are often ‘running’ all the time. Always thinking, working, trying to figure things out, trying to remember what we ‘have to do’, concerned about the future, reliving the past and a thousand other concerns our minds are occupied with. This ‘running’, ‘occupied’ or ‘busy’ mind is so common that many of us don’t know what it feels to have a ‘quiet mind’, or stop our thoughts. Many meditation practices make it the goal to stop the mind, stop thinking, or ‘empty’ the mind of thoughts. The experiences reported over the centuries by those who have learned to calm the mind is that our Natural Being surfaces once the mind calms or stops. We can then feel our connection to the world around us in a more direct way, we can have in-sights into our real Selves. This exercise sometimes feels silly at first, especially by those of us who have been serious ‘mind followers’. When done right it empties the mind of it’s ‘chatter’ and we get an experience of ‘abiding’ in pure awareness.

METHOD:

Playfully, open your mind and mouth! and start talking --- Gibberish!...sounds...just any sounds, vocalizations, noises, that you want to say, or arise. Not words but gibberish, just sounds… spontaneously…just like kids do!

If done in a group you can engage in ‘conversations’ with others in your strange sounding made up languages. You may start laughing at and with each other. This is all good. Enjoy it.

After a few minutes of doing this….let yourself Stop…wind down…the mind becomes quiet.

And now FEEL the quiet. Just be with the Quiet. Find a Still Center Point inside your self and just sit and be with it. Just Be and notice what it feels like.

You can do this by yourself or in a group with a facilitator. If you’re doing it by yourself just make sure it’s a private place or your neighbors may call your local mental health professionals to check up on you!

Physical Energy Awakening –Vibratory Realignment

As most of us know nowadays, our bodies end up carrying most of our stress and there is gathering evidence that many of our dis-eases are rooted in stressing our bodies.

These basic, natural movements are designed to let our bodies naturally and easily realign themselves, and free themselves of any unwanted, stuck or uncomfortable energies they’ve been carrying. This is where we help the Inner Body-Etheric Body to re-integrate and connect with our physical bodies.

The body knows innately how to release our stuck, held back, pent up energies. Animals do this freely, easily and automatically. Watch how dogs will shake their heads and bodies to feel better and more aligned. See how the ducks flap their wings to realign their energy, ‘shake their tail feathers’ and then settle down, see how cats stretch and ‘vibrate’ their bodies filling themselves with energy, see how birds ‘puff’ their feathers out and re-energize themselves etc.

METHODS: What do our bodies want to do when we first wake up in the mornings?

They want to stretch! Why? Because stretching ‘floods’ the body with a certain re-energizing vibratory energy. Isn’t Nature amazing? How simple could it be. Have you ever seen a cat stretch after a nap? Notice how they ‘vibrate’ – shake a little from the stretch. What’s happening? They are re-energizing their whole bodies with a simple stretch.

And Yawn! Why yawning? Because it opens the energy channels in our heads (brains) and the Breath – The Prana – The Life force into the lungs which oxygenate – feed our ‘inner’ life – the blood. Did you ever think about that the lungs are where the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ worlds meet? Where your inner flow (your blood) surfaces like an underground river and meets the air and picks up oxygen molecules.

And open wide and say ‘Aaaaahhhww’Mmmmm! Along with the yawn we naturally make a sound that is very close to “The Word”, the original primal sound of the energy that created the Universe. Coincidence? As we wake up and ‘re-create’ – ‘re-start’ our worlds each morning out of us comes the universal sound – ‘The Word’ – the ‘AUM’ of the Vedas, the ‘Amin’ of Islam, the ‘Amen’ of Judaism and Christianity. We ‘AaaaaaaMmmmm’, the great ‘I AM’.

How easy was that? As usual the answers are along Occam’s Razor (the theory that the best explanation is probably the simplest one).

2nd Method: This one is easier to learn by watching someone, so watch that guy up front doing the ‘shake it out’ Dance!

Start by rotating your hands, hands relaxed and just rotating them while relaxed. Let the vibration – movement start rising up your forearms, then up your arms. Have you ever seen swimmers loosen their arms before a race?

While allowing the arms to ‘shake out the tension’ keep your breath ‘open’, take a breath in fully through the mouth and let it go. Keep the arms relaxedly ‘shaking it out’ and take a few breaths.

Now start rotating the hips slightly with feet firmly planted, like you are ‘shaking out the tension in your legs’ without moving your feet. You may find a lot of energy coming up from the Earth and wanting to be ‘shaken out’ of you. This is good. Remember to keep your breathing open.

Now make a medium sized circle with your lips and start to let your breath come in and out more rapidly. Don’t force or make the breath do this, but allow it to do it on its own. If you’ve ever seen a howler monkey’s face while he’s howling, it’s sort of like that (don’t worry, we won’t be howling, that’s the advanced class and much more expensive!). This is a prelude to what is called the ‘Fire Breath’ by Yogi’s, students of Pranayama, the art of breath control.

By now if you’ve followed the instructions you should be a fire breathing, shaking, vibrating volcanic energy machine ready to compete with Pele`!

Laughter Yoga & Pure Fun

We have all heard it said that-- “Laughter is the best medicine.”Dr. Bernie Siegel cured his cancer using only laughter by watching funny movies.There are hundreds of cases of laughter healing supposedly terminally ill patients.With this enjoyable technique we let laughter wash over and through us…usually there are a few people who have truly tearspilling, gut busting healing laughter occur during this playful exercise.

Hundreds of medical studies have by now shown the healing power of laughter. ‘Laughter Yoga’ was a practice of the ancient Rishis of India over 5,000 years ago. Dr Madan Kataria of Mumbai India started a ‘Laugher Yoga Club’ a few years ago and now there are 1,000’s of laughter yoga clubs across the world. Laughter strengthens your blood vessels, reduces food cravings, helps the immune system, helps the lymphatic system, increases brain endorphins, helps with your outlook on life…etc.

A recent study showed that preschool children laugh an average of 400 times per day but by the time we reach adult hood we only laugh 17 times per day.(that’s not a very funny statistic)

Pila Chiles says:

The Ancient Hawaiians say there are two chemical reactions within the human body that can accomplish this (Waking back up, becoming enlightened). One is the "sacred tear", said to be located "far beneath the chaos and confusion of the head", beyond the "white noise static" layer of confusion that encases our planet. It is the tear